The Dark Halo, page 2
“I assume this woman was not also in her eighties?”
Lomax shook her head, her face briefly showing irritation.
“Have you seen this woman since then?”
“Every Friday like clockwork, except today.”
“What does she look like?”
“Five eight, slim, maybe 120 pounds. 25 to 28 years old. Long chestnut-colored hair with a curl in it. Sometimes she had her hair in a ponytail.”
Coombes wrote this down. He noticed that Lomax didn’t need to think before giving the woman’s description, like she’d thought this woman many times before.
“You said she looked like a model; she wore expensive clothes?”
“No, nothing like that. Jeans and a T-shirt, running shoes, that kind of thing. I just meant she could’ve been a model, if she wanted. She did wear sunglasses inside the hotel though, like she was a movie star.”
He noticed Sato approaching with a smile on her face.
“Okay, last question. Did you ever see this woman with anyone else, perhaps on days when Mr. Vandenberg wasn’t a guest?”
“No, I would remember.”
A red spot appeared on Anna Lomax’s cheeks as she thought again about the mystery woman. She sighed, her eyes dipping to her hands, folded in her lap. He supposed she was realizing that she would never see the woman in the sunglasses again, whatever that meant to her. Coombes passed her his card.
“If you think of anything, give me a call.”
He kept giving witnesses his card, telling them to call. But in all the years he’d been a cop no one ever had, not even to tell him they liked the color of his eyes. He stood, buttoned his suit jacket, and glanced toward Dalton who stood a short distance away watching them with a pinched, nervous look. When Lomax was gone, he turned to Sato.
“Turns out Vandenberg’s been meeting a young woman here every Friday. Sounds like the old devil was having an affair, unless she’s a pro. Either way, Vandenberg’s wife is probably not going to like it. Our mystery woman didn’t show today, which is an interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”
“You think she’s involved?”
“Probably not, but the timing’s a little off. Did you get the security footage?”
Sato nodded.
“That security guy is disgusting. His office smells like underwear and burgers. Anyway, I told him the manager said it was ok for us to get a copy of today’s security footage and he downloaded it all onto a thumb drive while he looked at my chest.”
“We should leave before Dalton works out he got played.”
“Right.”
They set off again, across the wide floor of the lobby.
“Any chance you to make your own way back to the PAB?”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a dental appointment.”
It was the same story he’d given his lieutenant and saw no reason to change it.
3
When he got back to the Police Administration Building, it was already 3:30. He hoped to avoid his lieutenant but found her standing in front of the elevator as the doors opened. Ellen Gantz had wild hair and piercing eyes that maybe you shouldn’t look into for too long. Gantz glanced at the two cups of coffee in his hands.
“Good of you to join us, John. One of those better be for me.”
He smiled and tried to make it worth something.
“Sure.”
She reached out and he passed her one of the cups.
“Grace had an interesting story when she came back from that hotel. It sounded a lot like one of those internet conspiracy theories, and I want to make sure I have it right before I take it to the captain.”
Coombes said nothing.
She took a sip of coffee and smiled.
“This is amazing! Is it from the place across the road?”
The LA Times building.
“Same as usual.”
Coombes took a sip from his own cup and figured out why hers was so good. He’d given her the one that he’d topped up with Scotch. Gantz glanced at her watch, then at the still-open elevator behind him. Get in, he thought. Her focus drifted back to him and he knew he was sunk.
“Let’s make this quick, I have another appointment.”
They walked back through the detective bureau to her office in silence. He fell into step alongside her, but fractionally back. She liked people where she could see them, but she also liked to lead. It was a fine line to walk, but hardly difficult. Knowing the likes and dislikes of those around him was an important part of the job and any cop who thought otherwise probably wondered why he worked Robbery Homicide and they didn’t.
They got to her office and he made the tactical decision not to close the door behind him. She sat on the edge of her desk and crossed her legs at the ankle. It was a position she used a lot and communicated that there was no desk between them, no rank. She took another mouthful of coffee and looked him over.
“How was it?” she said.
Her voice was soft, almost sympathetic. He shrugged.
“Just another crime scene. Pretty peaceful actually.”
“Not that, the other thing.”
“The dentist?”
Gantz sighed.
“You’re wearing a black tie, John. You always wear navy. Always. Did you really think I wouldn’t work out that you were at a funeral? I’m a little insulted by that dentist story. I earned this job, I didn’t get it because of my winning personality and my great ass.”
She’d known the whole time; he could see it. He nodded.
“The funeral was six weeks ago behind closed doors. This was supposed to be a public service…a commemoration.” Coombes sighed, remembering. “It wasn’t great. His son told me to leave, that I wasn’t welcome. That’s not a direct quote, he used shorter words.”
“That’s tough, I’m sorry.”
He saw what was happening. The sitting on the edge of the desk, the sympathy. She wanted to kill his investigation.
“Listen, if you think that I’m-”
She lifted her hand to cut him off.
“24 hours.”
“You think I can solve a serial in 24 hours?”
“No. That’s how long you have to prove this isn’t just a sad old man ending his life. And I better not hear anything about you working a serial killer case, am I clear? Your investigation is about Vandenberg only, at least as far as the department is concerned.”
A day. What could he achieve in a single day?
“You know, in the movies, it’s 48 hours. One time, it was 72.”
“I’ll split the difference. You still have 24 hours, but you can keep Sato.”
That gave him nothing. He’d already assumed she would be part of his investigation since she was his partner. Gantz was burying the case by the back door. If he couldn’t find anything, it was his fault, not hers. If it later came back to bite them, she’d insulated herself.
“And this arbitrary time limit starts tomorrow, right?”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Fine. But that’s all I’ll give you. Bring me something good.”
She finished her coffee and dropped it in a trash can. Their meeting was over. As he walked back to his desk, Coombes realized that the narrow window of a day meant that Gantz hoped to hide the nature of his investigation from the captain. This was only possible because Vandenberg’s wealth meant his family could afford the kind of legal counsel that could bury the Department if there was any hint of a rush to judgement. Grace Sato stood up and smiled at him when she saw him.
Then took his coffee cup out his hand.
Coombes was already familiar with photographs from the earlier suicides, despite having only worked on the Sutton case. His theory about a serial killer prowling the streets of L.A. hadn’t just formed in Vandenberg’s hotel room, but had been building over the previous two months.
He’d put the word out that he was interested in all suicides of high profile Angelenos since the beginning of the year and he had received a flood of emails, 143 total dead as of that morning. The number was higher than he expected, but he discovered that he could quickly dismiss most of them. There was a sameness about a true suicide scene that he could now recognize just from a couple of photographs.
Of the 143, only five stood out as suspicious, not counting Vandenberg. A small number in a bewildering number. Almost insignificant on the scale of things, yet he’d picked up the scent mostly from news reports or online newspaper articles. He’d looked at the photographs for over two hours, and all he could see was staged scenes, like someone had made them for their social media account.
He was too deep inside, he needed fresh eyes to see what he was seeing, and to know what it was. Coombes looked at Sato, scrolling through a list of names and numbers.
“What’re you working on?”
“Vandenberg’s cell phone records.”
“They’re through already?”
“Are you kidding me? Be lucky to get these by next month. I have a contact. One hand washes the other, you know?”
Sato turned from her screen and raised an eyebrow. Coombes smiled. Her brother worked at the FBI and her cousin for the IRS. Or maybe it was the NSA and CIA. He was convinced she’d given him different answers on separate occasions, perhaps deliberately. He didn’t care, she was useful to have around.
“Uh-huh. Anything interesting?”
“Repeated calls to a cell phone registered to a veterinary hospital off Overland Avenue. Forty minutes to an hour and a half duration. All his other calls were sub five minutes. Vandenberg had no pets, not even a fish. I looked at their website and found this profile page for the owner, Kelly Taylor.”
Sato switched apps on her computer to bring up her browser and angled her screen toward him. The page showed a woman in her late twenties with long brown hair. She was wearing green scrubs and was looking off camera like a stock photograph for a business report. She was a solid match for the woman described by Anna Lomax.
“The mystery woman,” he said, nodding. “Good work.”
“I called her. No answer.”
Coombes sat back in his chair, thinking it over.
“Call her again.”
Sato dialed the number without checking it against the screen. It was memorized already. From the number of times that she’d tried it, he supposed. She pressed a button and he heard the phone ringing on the phone’s loudspeaker. No answer, no message, it just kept ringing. She gave it about 30 seconds and disconnected.
“What do you suppose it means?”
Coombes shrugged.
“She’s in the wind.”
His partner continued to look at him with a level gaze.
“I don’t think she’s dead, Grace.”
“If you’re right and this is a serial case, why not?”
“Because these guys always have a defined type, a specific target. They’re careful, deliberate. Not opportunists. It’s not about killing random people to them, it’s like a game with rules. There’s always a twisted logic behind victim selection. There’s no way that logic is going to stretch from the head of a multi-billion-dollar movie studio to a veterinarian.”
“What then?”
“She saw the media coverage and got out of town. Switched off her phone. It’s what I’d do, wouldn’t you? Go somewhere remote and wait for it all to blow over. If she believes what the news is saying, that he killed himself, then she might blame herself. For the guilt he felt about his family, about an argument they might’ve had, for not being there to prevent it. Survivors always think they could have stopped it, no matter what.”
Sato looked like she was about to say something, then paused. He knew what she was thinking, it was there in her eyes. She thought that’s why they were here, that he was doing all this because he felt guilty about the death of Sutton. There was probably truth behind it, he thought. He’d need to choose his words more carefully in future, particularly in front of Gantz or the captain. They’d either dismiss his theories because of his connection, or say it was a conflict and take him off the case.
“First of all, her cell’s not off, it’s ringing,” Sato said. “Second, I don’t think she’s hiding somewhere remote. She’s not a coyote with a wounded paw, Johnny, she’s a grown-ass woman. We like to talk things through, not limp off to die in the woods. If she’s alive, she’s probably with her mom, sobbing into some home-cooked brisket.”
Coombes frowned. “Am I the coyote here?”
“That a problem for you?”
There was a smile in her eyes. She was cheeky and he liked it.
“I guess not.”
Sato turned back to her screen. “Figures.”
“Any other interesting names on that list?”
“Far as I can see, mostly studio executives, lawyers, like that. Golf buddies, probably. However, one of the other names did catch my eye. A cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai.”
Coombes sighed. “You think this doctor prescribed the Diazepam?”
“It’s possible.”
If Vandenberg turned out to be a genuine suicide, then his hunt for a serial killer was over before it started. He didn’t know why, but the prospect depressed him.
“All right. We can circle back to that later if necessary. In the meantime, I need you to double-check some crime scene pictures for me. I’ve sent you a link to a folder on the server. I need fresh eyes and mine need a coffee.”
He stood and pulled on his suit jacket.
“What about the veterinarian?”
As long as there was still a small chance she could be found hanging out of dumpster, he had to do something. To protect and to serve. It was more than just a catchy line written on the side of their vehicles. It meant something. This is how it often was, he reflected. Wasting time that he didn’t have, on loose ends that went nowhere.
“I’ll handle that when I get back.”
“What am I checking?”
“Deaths of wealthy people in Los Angeles attributed to suicide since the beginning of the year. I want you to look for any that don’t pass the smell test.”
Sato groaned.
“Johnny, I want you to know something and understand. I gave up a third date to be here tonight and the third date…that’s when the lock opens.”
“Jesus, Grace.”
She nodded.
“It’s funny. I thought I’d hear that tonight, just not from you.”
Coombes’ face was scarlet when he got on the elevator.
Third date, he thought wistfully. He and his wife had dated for two months before any damn lock opened and recently, the lock appeared to have returned. As the elevator sank toward the street, he pushed thoughts of his partner to one side and turned again to the problem with the Vandenberg crime scene.
It was still fresh in his mind like he was looking at photographs on his monitor. As soon as he’d walked into the room, it hadn’t felt right, but what was it that had made him feel that? Experience. Years on the job. His subconscious.
He made a mental list of the key findings.
The bottle on the floor.
The remote control that wasn’t next to the bed.
The TV was on, the volume too loud.
The body’s discovery by Eric Lyle.
Coombes had learned that a good way to develop a hypothesis was to work it backwards. To try to prove the opposite of what you believed. The weak point was Lyle, no question.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the hotel porter knocking the wine bottle onto the floor himself after finding Vandenberg’s body, his discomfort at seeing the dead man had shaken him deeply. The wine bottle had left a huge stain on the carpet, a stain that might never come out. The whole carpet might need to be replaced.
It was no great stretch to further imagine Lyle lying about the bottle to save his job. This explained both the bottle’s odd positioning, and the fact that it was the bottle on the floor, rather than the glass. It would not however explain the position of the remote control, or the volume of the television that had lured Lyle into the room in the first place.
Coombes sighed as a new thought occurred to him.
Unless Lyle lied about that as well.
Lyle had a keycard that he claimed could open any door in the hotel. If Lyle assumed the room was empty because Vandenberg hadn’t answered a knock at the door, he might’ve used his keycard in an attempt to steal something. A laptop, a tablet, drugs, perhaps even skim credit cards.
It was a big suite in a high-end hotel and the super wealthy were possibly less uptight about security for items that to them represented pocket change.
Having gained access to the room and found the dead body, Lyle might’ve panicked and called the front desk without thinking how to explain his discovery. Overhearing a loud television was the perfect justification for Lyle to enter the room when he had no right to be there. So he set the television volume high and put the remote back where he found it. The remote was never next to the bed, because Vandenberg wasn’t watching TV.
Because he was already dead.
The narrative tracked well, disturbingly well in fact, except for one thing. In order for Vandenberg to be a suicide, Eric Lyle had to be a criminal and he’d picked up no vibe from him other than anxiety and disgust. Lyle had answered his questions quickly and naturally with no sign that he’d thought answers out in advance, the classic sign of a lie. He had also not mentioned the television to him until he was asked about it, if Lyle had planned to use it to frame his story, he would have mentioned it almost immediately.
Lyle was either the best liar he’d ever met, or it was all true.
Coombes had hoped that getting away from his desk would give him some kind of clarity and see an angle he’d missed but he was back to where he’d started, with a crime scene that could only be explained to his satisfaction by the presence of a third person. His killer. He was no further on but he knew that questioning himself always served two purposes: it forced him to examine his assumptions more closely; and it prepared him for questions later. If Gantz or the captain thought of an angle he hadn’t, he’d look like an idiot.
A muscular African-American man pushed past him, almost knocking him over. The man twisted back toward him with his face twisted into a snarl.
